Distributed Computing

System Model
Unit 4
By
Niranjan Lal

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 CONTENTS
Introduction
DCS Models
Conclusion

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 Introduction
A Distributed System (DS) is one in which
• Hardware and software components, located at remote
networked computers, coordinate and communicate
their actions only by passing messages. Any distance
may separate computers in the network.
• Sharing of resources is the main motivation of
distributed systems. Resources may be managed by
servers and accessed by clients, or they may be
encapsulated as objects and accessed by client objects.

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 Introduction cont…
• A distributed operating system runs on multiple
independent computers, connected through
communication network, but appears to its users
as a single virtual machine and runs its own OS.

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 Introduction cont…
• Each computer node has its own memory. Examples of
Distributed Systems are: Internet, Intranet, Mobile and
ubiquitous computing.
• As a consequence of this definition, the characteristics
of distributed systems or networked-computers are:

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 Introduction cont…
• Concurrency: How to handle the sharing of resources between clients? Execution of
concurrent programs share resources: e.g. web pages, files, etc.
• No global clock: In a distributed system, computers are connected through network and have
their own clocks. Communication between programs is only through messages and their
coordination depends on time. Every client's (computer) perception of time is different.
Accurate time synchronization is not possible in DS. How to synchronize activities?
• Independent Failure: Distributed systems should be planned for the consequences of
possible failures of its components. How to handle a failure in the network or in a particular
client? Other clients might not be immediately aware of a failure. Each component of the
distributed system can fail independently leaving others still running. Faults in the network
results in isolation of the failed component only, but system continue running.

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 Characteristics of Distributed Systems
A Distributed System has the following characteristics:
• It consists of several independent computers connected through
communication network,
• The computers communicate with each other by exchanging message over
a communication network.
• Each computer has its own memory, clock and runs its own operating
system.
• Each computer has its own resources, called local resources Remote
resources are accessed through the network

We will discuss issues that arise in the design of a distributed operating

system and how communication takes place between the programs
running on the connected computers.

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 Motivation
• The prime motivation of distributed systems is to share resources . A resource is an
entity that can be usefully shared among users. Any hardware or software entity is
a resource.
• We use shared resources all the time. Resources are managed by a service. A
service is managed by one or more servers, which provide access to a set of
resources to clients via a set of well-defined operations (an interface).
• The motivation behind the development of Distributed Systems was:
– Users desire to have computational power at low cost.
– Need of the people working in a group to communicate with each other
– Sharing of information (data)
– Sharing of expensive computer resources.

Designing such systems became possible with the availability of cheap and powerful
microprocessors and advances in communication technology. When a few powerful
workstations are interconnected and can communicate with each other, the total computing
power available in such a system can be enormous.

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 Advantages of Distributed Systems are
• Resource Sharing: Due to communication between connected
computers resources can be shared among computers.
• Enhance Performance: This is due to the fact that many tasks
can be executed concurrently at different computers. Load
distribution among computers can further improve response time.
• Improved reliability and availability: Increased reliability is due
to the fact that if few computers fail others are available and hence
the system continues.
• Modular expandability: New hardware and software resources
can be added without replacing the existing resources.

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Inherent Limitations of Distributed Systems

The lack of common memory and system wide

common clock is an inherent problem in
distributed systems.
• Without a shared memory, up-to-date information about the
state of the system is not available to every process via a
simple memory lookup. The state information must therefore
be collected through communication.
• In the absence of global time, it becomes difficult to talk about
temporal order of events. The combination of unpredictable
communication delays and the lack of global time in a
distributed system make it difficult to know how up-to-date
collected state information really is.
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 System Architecture Types(DCS Models)
• Distributed systems can be modeled into several types.
Various models are used for building distributed computing
systems. These models can be broadly classified into five
categories, and they are described below:
1. Mini Computer Model,
2. Workstation Model,
3. Workstation Server Model,
4. Processor Pool
5. Hybrid Model.

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1. Mini Computer Model,

Figure 1: The distributed system based on

minicomputer model
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 1. Mini Computer Model cont…
• The minicomputer model is a simple extension of the centralized time-sharing
system.
• A distributed computing system based on this model consists of a few
minicomputers interconnected by a communication network were each
minicomputer usually has multiple users simultaneously logged on to it.
• Several interactive terminals are connected to each minicomputer.Each user
logged on to one specific minicomputer has remote access to other
minicomputers.
• The network allows a user to access remote resources that are available on some
machine other than the one on to which the user is currently logged.The
minicomputer model may be used when resource sharing with remote users is
desired.
• The early ARPA(Advanced Research Projects Agency) net is an example of
a distributed computing system based on the minicomputer model.

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2. Workstation Model

Figure 2: A distributed system based on the

workstation model
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2. Workstation Model cont…
 A distributed computing system based on the workstation model consists of several
workstations interconnected by a communication network.
 An organization may have several workstations located throughout an infrastructure
were each workstation is equipped with its own disk & serves as a single-user
computer.
 In such an environment, at any one time a significant proportion of the workstations
are idle which results in the waste of large amounts of CPU time.
 Therefore, the idea of the workstation model is to interconnect all these workstations
by a high-speed LAN so that idle workstations may be used to process jobs of users
who are logged onto other workstations & do not have sufficient processing power at
their own workstations to get their jobs processed efficiently.

Example:Sprite system & Xerox PARC.

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2. Workstation Model cont…
This model is not so simple to implement because several issues must be resolved. These
issues are as follows:
• How does the system find an idle workstation?
• How is a process transferred from one workstation to get it executed on another
workstation?
• What happens to a remote process if a user logs onto a workstation that was idle
until now and was being used to execute a process of another workstation?

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2. Workstation Model cont…
Three commonly used approaches for handling the third issue are as follows:
1. The first approach is to allow the remote process share the
resources of the workstation along win its own logged -on .user's
processes. This method is easy to implement, but it defeats the
main idea of workstations serving as personal computers, because
if remote processes are allowed to execute simultaneously with
the logged-on user's own processes, the logged-on user does not
get his or her guaranteed response.
2. The second approach is to kill the remote process. The main
drawbacks of this method are that all processing done by the
remote process gets lost and tie file system may be left in an
inconsistent state; making this method unattractive.

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2. Workstation Model cont…
Three commonly used approaches for handling the third issue are as follows:
3. The third approach is, migrate the remote process
back to its home workstation, so that its execution can be
continued there. This method is difficult to implement
because it requires the system to support preemptive
process migration facility.

The Sprite system developed at Xerox is an

examples of distributed computing systems based
on the workstation model.

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 3. Client-Server Model
File server
DNS server

Client invocation HTTP server Server

invocation

result result
Server

Client
Key:
Process: Computer:

Workstation

Workstation Workstation

100Gbps
LAN

Mini- Mini- Mini-

Computer Computer Computer
file server http server cycle server

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Services Provided by Multiple Servers
Service

Replication
• Availability
Server • Performance
Client

Server
Workstation

Workstation Workstation

Client 100Gbps
LAN
Server
MasterSlave Slave Slave
node 1 2 N

Ex. altavista.digital.com DB server

1Gbps SAN

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 Proxy Servers and Caches

Client Web
server
Proxy
server

Client Web
Ex. Internet Service Provider server
Workstation

Workstation Workstation

100Gbps
LAN

MasterSlave Slave Slave

node 1 2 N

1Gbps SAN

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 Peer Processes

Application Application

Coordination Coordination
code code

Application
Distributed whiteboard application
Coordination
code

Workstation

Workstation 100Gbps Workstation

LAN
Workstation Workstation

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 Mobile Code and Agents

a) client request results in the downloading of applet code

Client Web
Applet code server

b) client interacts with the applet

Web
Client Applet server

Workstation

Workstation Workstation

100Gbps
LAN

Mini- Mini- Mini-

Computer Computer Computer
file server http server cycle server

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 Network Computers and Thin Clients

X11 Compute server

Network computer or PC Diskless workstations

Thin network Application

Client Process
Workstation

Workstation Workstation

100Gbps
LAN

100Gbps
LAN MasterSlave Slave Slave
node 1 2 N

Server 1 Server N
1Gbps SAN

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4. Workstation-Server Model

Fig 3: A Distributed System based on the

workstation-server model

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4. Workstation-Server Model
The workstation model is a network of personal workstations
having its own disk & a local file system.
A workstation with its own local disk is usually called a diskful
workstation & a workstation without a local disk is called a diskless
workstation. Diskless workstations have become more popular in
network environments than diskful workstations, making the
workstation-server model more popular than the workstation
model for building distributed computing systems.
A distributed computing system based on the workstation-server
model consists of a few minicomputers & several workstations
interconnected by a communication network.

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4. Workstation-Server Model
In this model, a user logs onto a workstation called his or her
home workstation. Normal computation activities required by the
user's processes are performed at the user's home workstation,
but requests for services provided by special servers are sent to a
server providing that type of service that performs the user's
requested activity & returns the result of request processing to the
user's workstation.
Therefore, in this model, the user's processes need not migrated
to the server machines for getting the work done by those
machines.
Example:The V-System.

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4. Workstation-Server Model cont…
As compared to the workstation model, the workstation-server model has
several advantages:
1. It is much cheaper to use a few minicomputers equipped with large fast
disks that are accessed over the network than a large number of dishful
workstations, with each workstation having a
2. Diskless workstations are also preferred to dishful workstations from a
system maintenance point of view. Software installation, backup and
hardware maintenance are easier to perform with a few large disks than win
many small disks scattered all over a building or campus.
3. In the workstation-server model, since all files are managed by be file
servers, users have the flexibility to use any workstation and access the files
in the same manner irrespective of which workstation the user is currently
logged on. Note that this is not true win the workstation model, in which
each workstation has its local file system, because different mechanisms are
needed to access local and remote files.

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4. Workstation-Server Model cont…
As compared to the workstation model, the workstation-server
model has several advantages:
4. In the workstation-server model, the request-response protocol
described above is mainly used to access the services of the
server machine. Therefore unlike the workstation model, this
model does not need a process migration facility which is
difficult to implement.
5. A user has guaranteed response time because workstations are
not used for executing remote processes. However the model
does not utilize the processing capability of idle workstations.

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5. Processor–Pool Model:

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 5. Processor–Pool Model cont…
• The processor-pool model is based on the observation that
most of the time a user does not need any computing power
but once in a while the user may need a very large amount of
computing power for a short time.
• Therefore,unlike the workstation-server model in which a
processor is allocated to each user,in processor-pool model the
processors are pooled together to be shared by the users as
needed.
• The pool of processors consists of a large number of
microcomputers & minicomputers attached to the network.

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 5. Processor–Pool Model cont…
• Each processor in the pool has its own memory to
load & run a system program or an application
program of the distributed computing system.
• In this model no home machine is present & the user
does not log onto any machine.
• This model has better utilization of processing power
& greater flexibility.
• Example:Amoeba& the Cambridge Distributed
Computing System.

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 5. Processor–Pool Model cont…
As compared to the workstation-server model, the processor-pool model
allows better utilization of the available processing power of a distributed
computing system. This is because
• In the processor-pool model, the entire processing power of the system is
available for use by the currently logged-users, whereas this is not true for
the workstation-server model in which several workstations may be idle at
a particular time but they cannot be used for processing the jobs of other
users.
• Furthermore the processor-pool model provides greater flexibility than
the workstation-server model in the sense that the system's services can
be easily expanded without the need to install any more computers.
• The professors in the pool can be allocated to act as extra servers to carry
any additional load arising from an increased user population or to
provide new services.

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 6. Hybrid Model
• The workstation-server model has a large number of computer users
only performing simple interactive tasks &-executing small programs.
• In a working environment that has groups of users who often perform
jobs needing massive computation,the processor-pool model is more
attractive & suitable.
• To combine Advantages of workstation-server & processor-pool
models,a hybrid model can be used to build a distributed system.
• The processors in the pool can be allocated dynamically for
computations that are too large or require several computers for
execution.
• The hybrid model gives guaranteed response to interactive jobs
allowing them to be more processed in local workstations of the users

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 6. Hybrid Model
• Based on the workstation-server model but with the addition of a
pool of processors.

• Requires several computers concurrently for efficient execution.

• Gives guaranteed response to interactive jobs by allowing them

to be processed on local workstations of the users.

• Process allocated dynamically for the computations.

• More expensive.

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 Issues in Distributed Computing System
Transparency (=SSI)
• Access transparency
– Memory access: DSM
– Function call: RPC and RMI
• Location transparency
– File naming: NFS
– Domain naming: DNS (Still location concerned.)
• Migration transparency
– Automatic state capturing and migration
• Concurrency transparency (See the next page)
– Event ordering: Message delivery and memory consistency
• Other transparency:
– Failure, Replication, Performance, and Scaling

CSS434 System Models 36

Issues in Distributed Computing System Event
Ordering

send receive receive

X
1 m1 4
m2
send
2 3 receive Physical
Y
receive time

send
Z
receive receive

m3 m1 m2
A
receive receive receive
t1 t2 t3

CSS434 System Models 37

Issues in Distributed Computing System Reliability
• Faults
– Omission failure (See the next page.)
– Byzantine failure
• Fault avoidance
– The more machines involved, the less avoidance capability
• Fault tolerance
– Redundancy techniques
• K-fault tolerance needs K + 1 replicas
• K-Byzantine failures needs 2K + 1 replicas.
– Distributed control
• Avoiding a complete fail stop
• Fault detection and recovery
– Atomic transaction
– Stateless servers
CSS434 System Models 38
 Conclusions
• The concept of distributed computing is the most efficient
way to achieve the optimization.
• It deals with systems(hardware and software) , that contain
more than one processing / storage and run in concurrently.
• Main motivation factor is resource sharing.

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Thank You For Listening..!!

Questions ????

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